breathing in black and blue
by Cerulean Pen
Summary: If she's really a princess, then why doesn't the prince come and sit with her?…/Or, Charlene is very glad for dreams. Charlene/Finn.


breathing in black and blue

Summary: If she's really a princess, then why doesn't the prince come and sit with her?…/Or, Charlene is very glad for dreams. Charlene/Finn.

English Angst/Romance Rated: T Chapters:1 Words: Charlene & Finn W.

**a/n: **I know I've been gone forever and a day, but now I'm back, and I still want to write for this archive (although I'm also writing for "Jurassic Park"). Enjoy this little Charlene/Finn fic to remind everyone that I'm not dead, and I'll have a serious Wilby fic up later. Leave an honest review.

who designed crowns to look like stars?

:::::

Charlene knows how they sit when they get a table at the Frozen Marble. First, there's Philby and Willa, who drink out of the same shake, talking about somethingorother, filled with facts and math and little giggles. Then, there's Jess and Maybeck, spooning out a sundae, arguing or cracking jokes or making comments at the same time so they sound like one. There's Finn and Amanda, sharing a chocolate scoop, their eyes locked, holding hands under the table, blushing like they're pretending not to notice. Charlene completes the circle. Princesses do not eat ice cream.

But if she's good at imagining, she can see Finn sitting next to her, tucking his hair behind his ears and snorting because he's laughing so hard and smiling at her for real, not because he's sorry. Her hands close over the air that is empty, void of love.

"Are you okay Charlene?"

Her ears are ringing. "I'm fine."

Only princesses are fine.

:::::

When she was five, Charlene saw Sleeping Beauty, and was in love with how dedicated the prince was, even though there was a dragon and vines and the fact there may not be a princess after all. She could pretend she was Sleeping Beauty, napping there in her fluffy bed, dreaming until the perfect lips touched hers. Princesses can't be princesses without a prince.

Oh, sure, Charlene can dub the others as princesses. Willa is definitely the Belle type, a book-smart brunette that can speak for herself; Jess is like a Mulan, strong, yet beautiful, and definitely fits in around guys; Amanda is the Jasmine girl, with her exotic eyes, her flawless skin (only princesses are flawless), her long hair. Is Finn like her Aladdin, sweeping her off her perfect feet?

He leans over in the middle of a meeting to kiss her.

Why yes, yes he is.

:::::

She doesn't want to be a Cinderella, who had to endure all those years of hardship before finding her prince. She wants to be Sleeping Beauty, just dreaming away all that time, picturing and imagining and pretending beneath her frilly princess pillows. In a glimmering shower of fairy dust, he'll arrive, surprised by her beauty (_oh) _bending down to kiss the heart-shaped lips, connecting their souls. She'll wake up and be amazed that he finally came. (Is this another dream?)

Charlene comes back to her crystalline palace, with the glass windows over the ocean, the chrome finishing where she can see her reflection, and goes to her bedroom, her haven. She can slam the door, clenching her hands into fists, where her perfectly manicured fingernails dig into her skin, leaving those little pink scars, her favorite colors. But she's so angry, she clenches her fingers, she feels herself shake, bile laps at the back of her throat.

(She's afraid she'll e x p l o d e.)

Princesses never got angry. Princesses kept themselves neat (even when running through the forest.) Princesses never had to share their prince with someone else. Charlene looks up at the glimmering blonde hair, the bright blue eyes, the straight white teeth, the soft pink lips waiting to be awakened. Is she a princess?

"Wow Charlene, that dress makes you look like Sleeping Beauty." At least she can pretend to be.

:::::

She wants to hold Finn's hand more then anything, squeeze it, lace her fingers between his, where they fit perfectly. That'll make the little pink scars disappear, erase all the pain somewhere in her chest (never quite in her heart), give the princess her prince. It's so very, very tempting when no one else is looking…

Amanda reaches for his hand, her thin fingers wrapping around his, forming and writing and twisting and fumbling.

Charlene's fingers would fit.

:::::

It's not that Charlene hates Amanda. No, if Amanda was in the middle of the street with a car racing towards her, Charlene would push her out of the way. But, they both want something, and Amanda claims the prize, holding it just out of reach. Charlene knows that Amanda is aware that she likes Finn, and if she says anything remotely like ("I love you so much"), Amanda will cross the line.

All those times where Charlene stared at Finn in the moonlight are part of her dreams, the vital ingredient, and when she wakes up underneath the Disney Castle, she tries to hold onto those few moments of dream, like it's a tangible substance, where she's the sleeping princess being awakened by the prince. He'll be over there with Amanda, the two of them laughing, without a care in the world, and she'll just be another girl on the pavement who has lost.

"Charlene…wake up."

She doesn't want to.

:::::

The only way to escape is to dig her fingernails down into the delicate flesh of her palm, to drill down, until she's sure she'll draw blood. While buried beneath heaps of blankets, she'll try to breathe, shoving the sharp little nails into her skin. Her eyes will open wide, her lips will writhe in silent screams, but the pain her chest will finally find the way to her heart, where it belongs.

Three a.m., and all is not well. Bathroom floor cold against her cheek, something warm dripping down her arm, shivering in the darkness. Only feeling, never seeing or hearing around her. Princesses never bled. Trembling, splintering, shattering. Blade just a few inches away from her fingertips. Scars turn her favorite color. The Earth is still turning, but she's stuck in this single moment.

FinnIthinkIneedyou.

:::::

Scars don't heal fast enough. She'll wear long-sleeved shirts during the warmest Florida days, she'll wear a nightgown to bed and make up lies, she'll do everything physically possible to disguise the prettyprincessperfect scars. She's become smarter: no more laying in the bathroom, with a knife beside her. There are other options. She doesn't need Finn every single night, but he might make it easier.

Charlene sits with Willa in the middle of a dark library, the two of them studying for their finals. Her arm hurts, really hurts. She looks up at Willa; she wonders if Willa has ever really hurt. Her textbook falls with a loud _bang _to the floor that makes her chair shake, turns heads up, and brings a chorus of "shhh" from the librarian. "I've got it." Her voice sounds distant, coming from an auto-pilot response inside of her. Charlene bends over; her sleeve rides up, eager to pull back the invisibility cloak, revealing the secrets it has had to keep.

Willa gasps, and drops her own book, and sees the hard pink stripes running up Charlene's arm, intersecting and parallel and perpendicular with each other, like veins on the outside. "Oh my God." Charlene has been breaking on the inside all this time. Willa reaches out, afraid to stroke the skin, terrified of what this must've felt like to Charlene. Her pinky finger prods a raised scar that seems to scream on its own. "Doesn't it…doesn't it hurt?"

"They're nothing."

Princesses mustn't tell lies.

:::::

She collapses.

In the middle of the street. Charlene knew her feet were touching the ground, but all of a sudden, they weren't, like a deprivation of gravity. She lands hard, knees first, torso, shoulders, head, bouncing like a ball in the hands of physics. There's little shrieks and there's Willa crying and there's a hand over hers and there's fingers between her own and they fit perfectly.

Someone else is gently touching her arm, but the owner of the perfect fingers is still holding onto her, keeping her from f a l l i n g. There's lips, the softest imaginable, because she has been imagining them, from dreams that vanish when she awakens. She's Sleeping Beauty in her princess bed, trying to break the spell.

Charlene's eyes open. The spell is broken. There's Finn, with his fingers enlaced with hers, looking just as surprised as she is, but if she squints, she can see the prince from her dreams. No more fingernails into palms. He helps her to her feet, and steadies her, and says "maybe you should sit down."

Yes. They can sit in their thrones now, side by side, princess and prince of scars.


End file.
